haha, that's good Jonathan....don't get me started on religion. It won't be pretty....

As the king of losing races, I'm supremely qualified to attempt a top 10 excuses list because I've used them all....and heard 'em all. And yep, they're ALL lame, hehe....

In no particular order:

10. I was concentrating on cleaning the course.
9. There was a cone out of place! Of course the loser doesn't say anything until after the winner is announced.
8. I couldn't hear the starting beeps for all the noise.
7. I just came to this race for the party(well, this one is sorta valid).
6. I've been driving all day.
5. My opponent kept spraying cones into my lane.
4. I suck at push starts.
3. I was sure my opponent would dq.
2. The hill was lame.
1. THE COURSE SUCKED!

I raced Leif Garrett in the indoor Slalom Event in the movie -
actually, it was the PALMDALE SKATEBOARD RACE scene....
they had people wearing Cowboy hats, and had bales of hay by the sides
of the whole contest, to make it look like they were in the desert, I guess.....

Leif was the character BRAD HARRIS in the movie -
AND..... when you hear them announce our names in the movie -
- the announcer says:

-"Next up - BRAD HARRIS for the L.A. Wheels , and RENE CARRASCO for the
Malibu Coasters !"
-"Alright Gentlemen, stand by."
THEN THE WHISTLE BLOWS.....

......and then the announcer says: "BRAD HARRIS is looking good...."
and finally: "BRAD has got CARRASCO........and he wins!"

That's also written in the movie book SKATEBOARD too - on pg. 107 !

We filmed the scene inside Devonshire Downs, in the San Fernando Valley, Ca.

O.K. here's the deal:

I was working at a Deli Sandwich shop called 'Lil Pickle' - in Garden Grove, Ca.
I'm in the middle of making a pastrami sandwich, when the phone rings.
I answer and say "Garden Grove Lil Pickle" !

On the other end is Surf Legend Tom Padaca saying "is that you Rene?"
I say yeah - - and he tells me "Remember I told you I would get you in a Movie -
when I saw your brothers and you racing at Escape Country Skatepark ?"

I remembered and said - "Oh yeah".

Tom then says "we're shooting THE MOVIE 'SKATEBOARD'
and we're filming the Slalom Race scene TONIGHT - - -
in the San Fernando Valley- can you get up here as soon as possible ?"

I said "Sure".

*Tom gave me directions -
*I told the manager : "I gotta go - I'm gonna be in a Movie!"
*The manager said I was fired if I go.
*I took off, went home, grabbed my skate gear.
*I drove a 1962 Rambler - and I went to the TIC TOC Market -
*grabbed a 25 cent QUART of reclaimed oil - put it in Rambler...
* grabbed $3.00 worth of gas - jumped on the Freeway -
*and high-tailed it over to the San Fernando Valley, Ca.

I got there around 3:00 PM & we filmed from about
5:00 PM til about 11:30 or midnight !

Dear Billy,
Nice spelling. You're on your way to a career in lawn care. How about I send you a friggin' book so you can learn to read and write? I'm giving your older brother the space ranger. At least HE can spell!
Santa
____________________________________________________________________
Dear Santa,
I have been a good girl all year, and the only thing I ask for is peace and joy in the world for everybody!
Love, Sarah

Dear Sarah,
Your parents smoked pot when they had you, didn't they?
Santa
___________________________________________________________________
Dear Santa,
I don't know if you can do this, but for Christmas, I'd like for my mommy and daddy to get back together. Please see what you can do?Love, Teddy

Dear Teddy,
Look, your dad's banging the babysitter like a screen door in a hurricane. Do you think he's gonna give that up to come back to your frigid mom, who
rides his ass constantly? It's time to give up that dream. Let me get you some nice Legos instead.
Santa
__________________________________________________________________
Dear Santa,
I want a new bike, a Playstation, a train, some G.I. Joes, a dog, a drum kit, a pony and a tuba.
Love, Francis

Dear Francis,
Who names their kid "Francis" nowadays? I bet you're gay; I'll set you up with a Barbie.
Santa
_________________________________________________________________
Dear Santa,
I left milk and cookies for you under the tree, and I left carrots for your reindeer outside the back door.
Love, Susan

Dear Susan,
Milk gives me the runs and carrots make the deer fart in my face when ridingin the sleigh. You want to do me a favor? Leave me a bottle of scotch.
Santa
________________________________________________________________
Dear Santa,
What do you do the other 364 days of the year? Are you busy making toys?
Your friend, Thomas

Dear Thomas,
All the toys are made in China. I have a condo in Vegas, where I spend most of my time making low-budget porno films. I unwind by drinking myself silly and squeezing the asses of cocktail waitresses while losing money at the
craps table. Hey, you wanted to know. Santa
________________________________________________________________
Dear Santa,
Do you see us when we're sleeping, do you really know when we're awake, like in the song?
Love, Jessica

Dear Jessica,
Are you really that gullible or are you just a blonde? Good luck in whatever you do. I'm skipping your house.Santa
________________________________________________________________
Dear Santa,
I really really want a puppy this year. Please please please PLEASE PLEASE could I have one?
Timmy

Timmy,
That whiney begging shit may work with your folks, but that crap doesn't work with me. You're getting a sweater again.
Santa
________________________________________________________________
Dearest Santa,
We don't have a chimney in our house, how do you get into our home?
Love, Marky

Mark,
First, stop calling yourself "Marky", that's why you're getting your ass whipped at school. Second, you don't live in a house; you live in a
low-rent apartment complex. Third, I get inside your pad just like the boogeyman does, through your bedroom window.
Sweet Dreams,
Santa

This is sort of "dark side." It just came to me this is November 22nd.

I'm 45 years old, 46 in January. It's hard to believe, but I remember what I was doing 43 years ago.

I can still remember my parents black and white TV set with Douglas Edwards of CBS talking on and on about "the President's condition." Being almost three years old I can also remember my mother's reaction that afternoon when my brother (only 7 at the time) walked in the door two hours early from school. The principal sent everyone home after lunch when hearing the news.

I told my mom this story about 10 years ago and she really doubted I remembered it. She said I probably just heard stories later and made it up in my mind. I then asked her about saying out loud, "I guess that means that Johnson is now in charge."

She was stunned. That was one part of the afternoon I don't think she had ever told anyone.

I remember it as JFK's assassination as it is also my mom's birthday. Just got back from Cornwall whereMary-Beth and I took my parents out for super.

I remember my mom used to cry on her birthdays sometimes because of the assassination. For years and years. this time with the added stress of having to helpdad a little more (stroke in March) it didn't even come up and we had a great few hours together.

Don't waste a minute guys enjoy life and make the most of it. Cuz you never know when you'll go to the dark side for good.

This was in Thursday's Charleston Pissed & Worrier newspaper in the sports section. I swear it's not a joke. He plays for the Charleston Sting Rays ECHL (East Coast Hockey League) minor league team. Look it up on the web:

Back to the Kennedy thing - I was only 3 at the time. I remember my parents and some other adults sitting at the table talking about it. They were talking about the bullet holes saying it went in here and came out here pointing to themselves. In my 3 year old mind I thought he had been shot with an arrow and that it was still stuck in him ... going in here and sticking out there.

I missed the thread "Increasing Cost of Racing" before it was locked, but wanted to add this:

I had the most fun three years of racing thanks to Brian Parsons and his DC Outlaw Series'.

Entry fee: $0

Prize: $0 (maybe some shwag from Bozi or Cabbage).

Fun Factor: Off the f#@kin' chart!!!!

Don't get me wrong, I had good times in New York, Georgia, and South Carolina, but the travel distances (and expenses) wore me out after a couple of years. I would LOVE to have regular races at the Gaithersburg Park-N-Race again.*

If more effort isn't put into small, local races, eventually there won't be anyone to attend the bigger ones.

There's a (kinda lame, but workable) hill next to our soon to be built local skatepark. It's owned by Penn State. Used to be a Soap Box Derby track. The surface sucks, and the top of the hill (the steepest part) was cut off to make room for a school library.

I'm going to approach them and ask that they re-pave so it's suitable for races. I hope to convince them that it'd be a good thing to have a school sponsored team. I will offer to run regular local races for free.

If we don't keep the small-time races going, the big ones will dissappear as well. If we want more world class racers, they have to start somewhere.

*Side note: Attendance at Brian's races peaked at 40-50 per race. Then we started setting more technical and tighter courses. While this was OK for those of us who could make them, it was a quick turn-off for the newer or less experienced racers and attendance soon dropped to maybe 10-20. So tougher courses may not be the best idea for small local races.

The biggest hill, the most tech course, doesn't always equal the most fun.

Even at 'races' like The Farm, I've always tried to bring extra cones, just to set a 'warm-up lane' that isn't too hard to run. It's a great way to keep sharp and alert, as opposed to sitting on your board near the start area, awaiting your name/number to be called. IMHO, this type of thing should be standard operating procedure for most any event. A limber racer will be far more cabable than one who has sat on their a$$ for 45 minutes.
But, this also brings up the spectre of course setting in general; Do we need to be so 'Tech' that the course is unusable by the racers that have less experience? I don't think so. Technical elements should be included, no doubt, just to keep folk a little bit on their toes, but by no means should a course that's to be used by everyone be so demanding that gets frustrating to just run thru. FUN should be a major motivator, as should making any event Approachable by novice/intermediate riders. Having more than one 'set' course is one answer, and often, given the terrain parcels available, the best way to show off top talent, and also let less experienced racers have a good go at it. It behooves the veterans of this sport to remember what it was like to first run cones. You Forgot? Try it SWITCH! Or, with a good ol' mid-80's PIG setup with Krypto CSi's and wide Indy's. Or BOTH. Be humbled a moment (this excudes Kenny) by the excercise. Set a course that fits one of the above criteria, then see what happens when someone of lesser experience runs it. The Gaithersburg Park+Drive should be a lesson to all of us. We can push this sport forward, or shoot ourselves thru our Vans. Ego checks may be required to do the former, the latter is all too likely otherwise.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler sent out an email yesterday announcing that his wife of 12 years, Elizabeth Dewberry, had dumped him for billionaire Ted Turner. Dewberry, 44, an author in her own right, might be attracted to Turner, 68, because the media mogul resembles the grandfather who molested her as a child, Butler writes.

Italian’s Detention Illustrates Dangers Foreign Visitors Face
Chris Warde-Jones for The New York Times
Domenico Salerno, with his girlfriend, Caitlin Cooper, in Rome on Sunday. He was held for 10 days in the United States after being denied entry.

He was a carefree Italian with a recent law degree from a Roman university. She was “a totally Virginia girl,” as she puts it, raised across the road from George Washington’s home. Their romance, sparked by a 2006 meeting in a supermarket in Rome, soon brought the Italian, Domenico Salerno, on frequent visits to Alexandria, Va., where he was welcomed like a favorite son by the parents and neighbors of his girlfriend, Caitlin Cooper.

But on April 29, when Mr. Salerno, 35, presented his passport at Washington Dulles International Airport, a Customs and Border Protection agent refused to let him into the United States. And after hours of questioning, agents would not let him travel back to Rome, either; over his protests in fractured English, he said, they insisted that he had expressed a fear of returning to Italy and had asked for asylum.

Ms. Cooper, 23, who had promised to show her boyfriend another side of her country on this visit — meaning Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon — eventually learned that he had been sent in shackles to a rural Virginia jail. And there he remained for more than 10 days, locked up without charges or legal recourse while Ms. Cooper, her parents and their well-connected neighbors tried everything to get him out.

Mr. Salerno’s case may be extreme, but it underscores the real but little-known dangers that many travelers from Europe and other first-world nations face when they arrive in the United States — problems that can startle Americans as much as their foreign visitors.

“We have a lot of government people here and lobbyists and lawyers and very educated, very savvy Washingtonians,” said Jim Cooper, Ms. Cooper’s father, a businessman, describing the reaction in his neighborhood, the Wessynton subdivision of Alexandria. “They were pretty shocked that the government could do this sort of thing, because it doesn’t happen that often, except to people you never hear about, like Haitians and Guatemalans.”

Each year, thousands of would-be visitors from 27 so-called visa waiver countries are turned away when they present their passports, said Angelica De Cima, a spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection, who said she could not discuss any individual case. In the last seven months, 3,300 people have been rejected and more than 8 million admitted, she said.

Though citizens of those nations do not need visas to enter the United States for as long as 90 days, their admission is up to the discretion of border agents. There are more than 60 grounds for finding someone inadmissible, including a hunch that the person plans to work or immigrate, or evidence of an overstay, however brief, on an earlier visit.

While those turned away are generally sent home on the next flight, “there are occasional circumstances which require further detention to review their cases,” Ms. De Cima said. And because such “arriving aliens” are not considered to be in the United States at all, even if they are in custody, they have none of the legal rights that even illegal immigrants can claim.

Government officials have acknowledged that intensified security since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has sometimes led to the heavy-handed treatment of foreigners caught in a bureaucratic tangle or paperwork errors. But despite encouraging officers to resolve such cases quickly, excesses continue to come to light.

One recent case involved an Icelandic woman who was refused entry at Kennedy Airport because, a dozen years earlier, she had overstayed her visa by three weeks. The woman, Erla Osk Arnardottir Lillendahl, was deported Dec. 10 after what she described as 24 hours of interrogation and humiliating treatment — locked in a cell and barred from making phone calls. The Department of Homeland Security later issued a letter of regret.

In questioning Mr. Salerno, customs agents seemed to suspect that he intended to work here. Ms. Cooper, a copy editor for an educational publication, said she was in the airport lobby when an agent called to ask about Mr. Salerno’s income and why he visited so often.

The youngest son of a prosperous contractor in Calabria, Mr. Salerno helps out in his brother’s law firm in Rome and is able to visit the United States several times a year. Neighbors said he joined volunteers in refurbishing the Wessynton recreation center in 2006, then became one of its summer attractions, kicking a soccer ball with the kids and playing tennis with the adults.

“He just is a very open, fun and helpful guy,” said Christopher M. Porter, a resident of Wessynton.

Ms. Cooper said that at the airport, when she begged to know what was happening to Mr. Salerno, an agent told her, “You know, he should try spending a little more time in his own country.”

Another agent eventually told her to go home because Mr. Salerno was being detained as an asylum-seeker.

“The border patrol officer said to my face that Domenico said he would be killed if he went back to Italy,” she recalled, voicing incredulity that, in his halting English, he could express such a thought. “Also, who on earth would ever seek asylum from Italy?”

Twelve hours later, when Mr. Salerno was granted a five-minute phone call, he called Ms. Cooper and denied saying anything of the kind. Instead, he said, the asylum story seemed to be retaliation for his insisting on speaking to his embassy.

After being turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he was taken to the Pamunkey Regional Jail in Hanover, Va., where he ended up in a barracks with 75 other men, including asylum-seekers who told him they had been waiting a year.

Ten days after he landed in Washington, Mr. Salerno was still incarcerated, despite efforts by Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, and two former immigration prosecutors hired by the Coopers.

“He’s just really scared,” Ms. Cooper said in an interview last Thursday. “He asked me if Virginia has the death penalty.”

Luis Paoli, a lawyer hired by the Coopers, said there was no limit on detention while waiting for an asylum interview. But even after officials agreed the asylum issue had been a mistake, Mr. Salerno was not released.

“Now an innocent European, who has never broken any laws, committed any crimes, or overstayed his visa, is being held in a county jail,” Ms. Cooper wrote in an e-mail message to The New York Times last Wednesday, prompting a reporter’s inquiries.

Less than 24 hours later, immigration officials intervened and arranged to deliver Mr. Salerno to Dulles, where last Friday he flew to Rome. Ms. Cooper, who said she was now considering moving to Italy, was by his side.

Mr. Salerno was still shaken. “In America,” he said, “there are so many good people and beautiful people that don’t deserve to be showing these terrible things to the world.”

Do you know what Darkside of the Cone is? It's a place to tell your friends they suck and when you race them, you will beat them so hard their kids will cry.

I realize you have a personal axe to grind because your mother-in-law was detained in the US somewhere, but what does it have to do with slalom?

Hey guess what? I know someone that died in the World Trade Center, but that has nothing to do with slalom, does it? Just like the riots in Paris or natural disasters in Myanmar have nothing to do with slalom.

To sum up;

You suck. If we ever race, I will beat you. I will beat you so hard your Iranian mother-in-law will cry, and not a regular cry, but one of those high pitched "ie-ie-ie-ie" cries.

France's record on human rights has been condemned in a leaked report exposing police brutality, chronically overcrowded prisons and the jailing of children with adults. It also had harsh words for the country's immigration policy.
The 200 pages of damning criticism produced by the influential Council of Europe, due to be released on Wednesday, were leaked to Le Parisien at the weekend.

According to the leaked extracts, the report warns there is a "very large gulf" between what the law requires and common practice in France. The situation is so bad, it adds, that the country that prides itself on being the cradle of the droits de l'homme is increasingly finding itself hauled before the European Court of Human Rights.

The report, by Alvaro Gil-Robles, the council's human rights commissioner, is based on inspections of French prisons and police stations in September 2005. According to Le Parisien, Mr Gil-Robles said the difficulties in France were "persistent, even recurrent".

French media, which ran extracts, said the report reserved some of its strongest criticism for the police, who were apparently described by the Council of Europe as operating with a "sense of impunity".

Le Parisien said the report denounced a culture among officers that hindered investigations into cases of police brutality and violence. Highlighted abuses included claims that arrested suspects were not being automatically allowed legal representation during police interrogations and cited the numerous restrictions that made the lawyer's role "very limited".

"A democratic society has nothing to fear from the presence of responsible lawyers ... during [a suspect's] detention," read one extract from the report.

Mr Gil-Robles said he was "shocked by the lamentable state" of certain police cells where "detainees even sleep on the floor and are not given any mattress or bed linen". He said it was a "sad fact" that chronic overcrowding and a lack of money in French prisons "deprived a large number of detainees from exercising their basic rights" and made their incarceration a "double punishment".

A spokesman for Mr Gil-Robles said the French media reports were accurate: "This is an accurate copy based on our draft - though not final - report. It reflects the tenor of the report accurately."

The report is due to be presented on Wednesday to the committee of ministers.

Le Parisien said the council's report also criticised the fact that prisoners who misbehaved could be placed in punishment cells for up to 45 days.

The Council of Europe is a 46-member international body founded in 1949 and based in Strasbourg, France. It focuses on democracy, the rule of law, human rights, discrimination and other problems facing European society.

Mr Gil-Robles told France-Info radio: "For me the most important thing is that the prison route is not a route of vengeance but a route to obtain justice - to give criminals a punishment and afterwards allow them to be reintegrated into society ... In France that is not possible."

Mr Gil-Robles had harsh words for France's immigration policy and the announcement last year by the French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, of a 50% rise in expulsions of illegal immigrants.

"The very fact of announcing quotas is a shocking practice," Mr Gil-Robles said.

Only last week French government ministers considered new proposals from Mr Sarkozy to establish immigration quotas based on a points system. According to Le Monde, the report denounced the "penalisation" of foreigners in France because of the "hardening of immigration policies" that could "lead to the stigmatisation of asylum seekers suspected of being economic migrants".

The report also criticised the fact that those demanding asylum had to fill in forms in French. Detention centres for foreigners awaiting expulsion were said to be of varying quality, but the one in the Palais de Justice in Paris was described as "catastrophic and shameful to France".

i'm a New-york Times reader, i did not know it was an anti-american racist propaganda paper though, not until today. i though the traveling matter was of general interest, (traveling to important international races in the US) but i may be wrong after all.
i wouldn't discuss questions of human rights in general in this forum for sure.